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The question was whether she'd live long enough for me to uncover them.

CHAPTER 5

LILY

Pain woke me first. A dull, throbbing ache that pulsed through my skull in time with my heartbeat. I kept my eyes closed, trying to orient myself through the fog in my head. A soft mattress beneath me. Heavy blankets tucked around my body. The scent of mint and something else—coal smoke?

Wrong. Everything was wrong.

My flat didn't smell like mint. I didn't own blankets this heavy. And that ache in my head—when had I hit my head?

Memory crashed back in fragments. Gran's flat. The necklace. Shattering glass and impossible light. Trees and darkness and. . . the men with guns. Swords.

My eyes snapped open.

For one disorienting heartbeat, I saw them. Luminous threads stretching across the ceiling like gossamer spiderwebs, pulsing with faint golden light. They twisted, forming geometries that hurt to comprehend, patterns that shouldn't exist.

I blinked.

Gone.

My breath came shallow and quick as I stared at the empty ceiling. Those threads, I’d seen them before. In the forest, shimmering in the air around that little girl with the starlight eyes. I'd thought it was fear, adrenaline, the surreal terror of being chased by men with weapons. But now, lying in a strange bed with my head pounding. . . I was seeing them again.

What the hell was happening to me?

I turned my head slowly, fighting the wave of nausea that accompanied the movement, and took in the room. Wallpaper. Actual floral wallpaper in shades of rose and cream. A wardrobe made of dark wood that looked like it belonged in a museum. A washstand with a porcelain basin and pitcher. Heavy curtains drawn across tall windows, allowing only thin slices of daylight to penetrate the gloom.

This wasn't my flat. This wasn't anywhere I recognized.

I sat up too quickly. The room tilted, and I had to grip the edge of the mattress to keep from falling. My head pounded in protest, and when I lifted a hand to my temple, bandages. Someone had bandaged my head.

I looked down at myself. Still wearing my jeans and sweater, though someone had removed my boots. My Apple Watch was still there, the screen dark. I tapped it, and it flickered to life. The battery symbol glowed red. And the time and date in familiar glowing numbers.

Wednesday, October 1, 2025. 11:47 AM.

But that couldn't be right. Because the room around me looked like something out of a Victorian period drama, and the last thing I remembered.

The forest. The little girl. Men on horseback with weapons that belonged in the nineteenth century. Running, falling, hitting my head.

And him.

The man on the horse. Hazel eyes and a face too handsome for the circumstances. The way he'd looked at me, not with recognition but with. . . something else. Curiosity or suspicion.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, fighting another wave of dizziness. My socks touched cold floorboards—actual floorboards, not laminate or carpet. I forced myself to stand. The room swayed, but I managed to stay upright.

Where was I? And more importantly—when was I?

The thought was insane. Completely insane. But Gran's necklace had shattered, and there'd been that light, and suddenly I'd been in a forest being hunted by men who looked like they'd stepped out of the late 1800s.

Time travel. The word formed in my mind, and I tried to dismiss it at once. It wasn’t possible. It was the stuff of novels and films.

But I’d spent three years researching people erased from history, patterns of disappearance that made no sense. And Gran had looked at me with such intensity, had told me to trust my instincts even when logic insisted otherwise.

Especially then.

I moved toward the window on unsteady legs, pulling back the heavy curtain just enough to peer outside.

The view stole my breath.